A Field Guide to Peer Observation of Teaching*

Table of Contents

The term “peer observation” has taken on a variety of meanings. For the purposes of this document, we

will be using this term to refer not only to actual classroom visitation and observation, but also to a

broad range of activities related to assessment of teaching. This resource is organized around the

following topics.

I. Prologue: Eight Principles of Effective Teaching ............................................................................... 2

II. The Role of Peer Observation in the Assessment and Evaluation of Teaching .................................. 4

III. Peer Observation for both Formative and Summative Assessment .................................................... 7

IV. Formative Assessment of Teaching using Peer Observation ............................................................ 11

V. Developing a Departmental Plan for Formative Use of Peer Observation ........................................ 17

VI. Developing a Departmental Plan for Summative Use of Peer Observation ...................................... 21

VII. Choosing or Designing an Instrument to Guide Peer Observation ................................................... 24

Appendix A: The Peer Observation Process For Instructor Being Observed ........................................... 26

Appendix B: The Peer Observation Process For Instructor Conducting Observation .............................. 27

Appendix C: Peer Observation Checklist ................................................................................................. 28

Appendix D: Likert Scale Rating Peer Observation Form ....................................................................... 30

Appendix E: Ethnography-Style Peer Observation .................................................................................. 32

*Adapted for the University at Albany with permission from the Center for Effective Teaching and

Learning, University of Texas at El Paso.

Originally published as Peer Observation and Assessment of Teaching: A Resource Book (2006) edited

by Bill Roberson, Ph.D.

Revised and edited by Billie Franchini, Ph.D. and Bill Roberson, Ph.D., 2008-12 and by Billie

Franchini, Ph.D. in 2019.

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I. Prologue: Eight Principles of Effective Teaching

What is good university teaching? There is more agreement on this topic than one might think. The

growing body of research continues to point to a set of instructor behaviors and values that are

predictive of both how well students learn and student attitudes about learning.

In 1987, Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson consolidated the findings of several decades of research

on college teaching into a brief manifesto called “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate

Education.” (American Association of Higher Education Bulletin vol.39, no.7, pp.3-7). In 2012, as part

of the work of the UAlbany Strategic Plan Implementation, a faculty task force reviewed the published

research from the intervening years with an eye toward creating an updated set of principles and

standards that could be used to inform the work of contemporary university instructors. The faculty

group found that the original “Seven Principles” are still valid and remain the most concise,

comprehensive description of effective teaching practices available in the current literature. They serve

as a guiding set of ideas that cut across all methods, all disciplines, and all personalities. The faculty task

force added one additional principle to bring the original list into alignment with evolving concerns

about professional ethics. The resulting product is UAlbany’s “Eight Principles of Effective Teaching,”

presented here as a guide to initiatives that aim to enhance UAlbany’s teaching and to ensure the quality

of our practices. The Eight Principles can be used not only to guide an individual’s reflection on his/her

teaching, but can also serve as a set of criteria to frame effective practices for departments or for the

institution as a whole.

1. Good teaching communicates high expectations for students.

2. Good teaching encourages active learning.

3. Good teaching includes clear organization and smart preparation.

4. Good teaching respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

5. Good teaching ensures prompt, frequent, constructive feedback.

6. Good teaching involves productive student-faculty interactions.

7. Good teaching means maintaining respectful, ethical student-faculty interactions.

8. Good teaching invests in continuous improvement.

Select Bibliography of Research since the 1987 publication of Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven

Principles”

Bain, K.. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press.

Biggs, J. & Tang, C. (2007). Teaching for quality learning at university (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Open

University Press.

Brookfield, S. (2006). The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom

(2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Eble, K. (1988) The craft of teaching (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Fry, H. (2009). A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: Enhancing academic

practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

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Hativa, N. (2001). Teaching for effective learning in higher education. New York, NY: Springer.

Nilson, L. (2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. San

Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Prichard, K., & Sawyer, M. (1994). Handbook of college teaching: Theory and application. Westport,

CT: Greenwood Press.

Ramsden, P. (1992), Learning to teach in higher education. New York, NY: Routledge.

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II. The Role of Peer Observation in the Assessment and Evaluation of Teaching

Teaching is a multi-dimensional job. Assessing what we do as teachers requires a multi-faceted

approach. No single instrument can capture all aspects of any individual style or method of teaching.

Student surveys (SIRFs), for instance, can measure whether student perceptions of what we are doing

are aligned with what we ourselves think we are doing, but assessing our teaching requires more than

student impressions. Peer observation is just one part of a comprehensive, complex process and should

be used in conjunction with other means of assessment.

What is a peer?

A peer is a colleague who may or may not be your mentor. While a mentor is usually in a more senior

position, colleagues who share the same status can offer each other very useful observations and

guidance about teaching. Whom you work with will depend on your political realities and your goals. If

you are interested in a content-specific assessment, you will probably want to choose a peer in your

department to observe your class; if you would like a more general assessment of broader teaching

concerns (e.g., teacher-student rapport, general course design, classroom management, etc.), you might

choose to be observed by a peer from another department. In order to get a full and accurate picture of

your teaching practice, it is best to be observed by a variety of peers over the course of your career.

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment?

Assessment can have different purposes and take different forms. The distinction between formative and

summative is foundational to the approach to peer observation described in this resource. Formative

assessment of teaching is observation and measurement to inform an individual instructor’s teaching

practice; formative assessments are conducted for the purpose of growth, improvement, and

development. Summative assessment of teaching is observation and measurement to inform evaluations

based on an established set of criteria; summative assessments are primarily conducted for the purpose

of making administrative decisions (like contract renewal, tenure, etc.)

How does peer observation fit into a formative and summative assessment plan?

Ideally, a fair and comprehensive plan to evaluate teaching would incorporate many data points drawn

from multiple teaching dimensions. Such a plan would include not only student surveys, but also self-

assessments, documentation of instructional planning and design, evidence of activity to improve

teaching, and most importantly, concrete evidence of student learning.

But that is not all. A comprehensive assessment or evaluation of teaching would necessarily include

evidence of sound teaching practices and behaviors. For the collection of this evidence we need for

someone (or even multiple people) to watch what we do and observe how students react. This is the

purpose of peer assessment, more commonly referred to as peer observation.

What is the scope of peer observation?

While we often use the term “observation” to refer only to classroom visits, peer observation is also a

broader process by which university instructors collect data to provide feedback to colleagues on their

teaching efforts and practices. The process might include, but is not limited to—

review of course planning and design (syllabus, lesson plans, web presence)

review of instructional materials (handouts, exercises, readings, lectures, activities)

review of learning assessments (tests, graded assignments)

review of teaching strategies, techniques and behaviors

review of in-class interaction with students

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Why peer observation?

There are clear benefits to using peer observation.

1. Our faculty peers are usually aware of the departmental teaching mission and the intended

learning outcomes of our programs. They teach the same students and face the same challenges

that we do. Many are, themselves, experienced, effective teachers. Therefore, they are likely to

be competent observers of various aspects of our teaching.

2. Peer observation offers much-needed flexibility in the assessment of teaching effectiveness.

Depending on what an instructor wants to learn about his/her teaching, a peer can be identified in

the instructor’s home department in the same content area, so that the observation can be related

specifically to an instructor’s handling of a given content or to students’ progress toward a given

learning outcome. In other circumstances, it might be desirable to find a peer observer outside

the instructor’s department, in order to focus on non-content concerns, such as the flavor and

tone of student-faculty interaction, or the design of a particular activity. In some cases, an

instructor might invite a faculty member with expertise in a particular method, in order to

provide an expert’s perspective. How the peer observer is chosen will be determined by the

purpose of the observation, the political realities of the department, and how the collected data

will be used. More on these aspects of peer observation will be provided in later chapters.

3. Some dimensions of teaching effectiveness are most appropriately assessed by peers. While

students are well-equipped to assess their own experience in a course, faculty peers are better

suited for assessing the work of other faculty members in certain matters of content, course

design, and professionalism. Some key areas in which faculty are considered to be expert

reviewers include but are not limited to

Adequacy of course rigor and challenge

Course organization

Clarity and appropriateness of course objectives

Classroom management and engagement of students

Selection of course content

Effectiveness of instructional materials (e.g., readings, media)

Appropriateness of evaluation of learning (e.g., exams, assignments)

Appropriateness of methods used to teach specific types of content

Commitment to teaching and concern for student learning

Support of departmental instructional culture

What are the risks of using peer observation in the evaluation of teaching?

One downside of peer observation is that it may be difficult for even a well-intentioned observer to filter

out his/her own bias against a given teaching method or personality while conducting an observation.

For example, someone who values strict classroom control and considers the instructor’s presentation to

be the key learning object of the classroom may miss pertinent evidence when observing moments of

seeming chaos in a collaborative learning classroom, and vice versa. For this reason, instructors who use

peer observation will need to consider the observer’s assumptions about teaching and possibly plan for

visits by multiple peers.

Another risk is that if colleagues within the same department observe one another and the process is not

well-managed, relationships may suffer. Rightly or wrongly, many faculty members consider their

teaching to be a highly private concern. And because a peer observation can make teaching a little more

public, the process requires discretion and a careful touch.

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Being well informed about best practices for peer observation is one way to reduce the risk of potential

damage. Subsequent sections of this book will attempt to supply a few ideas related to such concerns.

What are the costs of developing a peer observation process?

These vary depending on the size of the department. Faculty time and some administrative services will

be required, no matter what the plan. For large departments these will be collectively significant, since it

may be necessary to form a committee or a task force, and it would be wise to ask the faculty to engage

in some training and norming. It will also be important to support the additional paperwork that will

accompany greater attention to assessment.

For these and other reasons, developing a peer observation program will need planning and broad

support of the departmental faculty.

What is the purpose of this document?

The Institute for Teaching, Learning and Academic Leadership offers this resource on peer observation

in support of the University at Albany’s teaching mission as part of an effort to develop a fair,

comprehensive, effective and civil plan for assessing and improving teaching and learning. While peer

observation is only one of many ways to provide feedback to faculty on their teaching, it is a highly

useful one, and it readily complements the practice of teaching assessment and evaluation that relies

heavily—and unfortunately, sometimes exclusively—on feedback from students.

We do not offer this resource to promote the substitution of one type of teaching assessment for another.

The assessment of teaching—whatever the purpose—needs to be multidimensional and customized from

program to program and instructor to instructor in order to capture those elements most relevant to

departmental mission and to the faculty’s most valued teaching objectives. We offer this resource in the

spirit of facilitating faculty efforts to measure those dimensions of teaching effectiveness that current

evaluation practices, such as student surveys alone, might ignore.

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III. Peer Observation for both Formative and Summative Assessment

Not all types of assessment serve the same purpose. In some cases, an instructor wants to receive

personalized feedback on how a course is going, how students are responding to an activity, or simply

whether or not students seem to be learning. The purpose of this kind of ongoing, continuous assessment

is to help the instructor make adjustments that will improve the quality of the course over the long term.

This kind of feedback is called formative assessment because it is ongoing and its purpose is

developmental. It asks, What is going well that I can build on? What can I do better?

How is summative assessment different from formative assessment?

Summative assessment is the review of evidence in order to make a judgment. If formative assessment is

a continuous process aimed at instructional improvement over time, summative assessment is the

opposite: it is a snapshot, an evaluation intended to indicate a level of competence at a moment in time,

measured against a standard or against a field. Summative assessments of teaching and research allow

administrators to make decisions on such things as promotion, tenure, raises, awards, etc.

Why is this distinction so important?

Here is an example of the problem. If you truly want to improve a course you are teaching and you

solicit input from a colleague, you are likely to accept his/her honest feedback—however negative it

may be—as potentially painful but necessary, and useful rather than threatening. You might even go so

far as to invite negative criticism by explaining to a peer observer, “I’m having a problem in class with

the way this activity is working. Could you please come to my class, take a look at it and tell me what I

might do differently?” If the negative feedback you get from the observation is accurate, it has the

positive benefit of showing you how to be more effective. That’s the purpose of formative assessment. It

has to be confidential so that it can be candid. It is for you and nobody else to process and act upon, if

you choose to do so.

Now picture the situation where the same peer observer who visited your class is asked to evaluate your

teaching (summatively) for your permanent file, based on the same report he/she created for you,

personally, candidly and confidentially. The same criticism that you invited from him/her in the first

place can suddenly, if handled carelessly or unscrupulously, become evidence that unfairly and

inaccurately paints your entire professional practice in a negative light. Your teaching might, in fact, be

highly effective overall (and you even cared enough to solicit feedback in the first place!), but the

recorded evidence now invites a potentially biased or ill-informed reviewer to focus on negative

dimensions of your teaching, and these might not even be central to your achievements and competence

as a teacher.

In order to avoid situations like these, it is important that the formative assessment you solicit for

improvement be explicitly differentiated from the summative assessment or evaluation since the

purposes that drive the two processes are very different. If we want to motivate instructors to seek

candid feedback and reflect on their teaching, we have to create a process in which they are not

penalized for doing so. For this reason, it is in the best interest of departments to create and a peer

observation process that encourages both formative and summative assessments. (This process is

discussed at length in Part V of this document.) When designing assessment practices for yourself and

for your own department, peer observers should carefully distinguish between the procedures and

comments intended to improve teaching and the procedures and comments intended for administrative

records.

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How effective is peer observation for formative assessment?

The first-hand witnessing by a colleague of what is happening in the classroom can uncover

circumstances that otherwise might remain hidden from the instructor. A peer observer can see how

students in the back of the classroom react to something the instructor is doing in the front. This person

can share the perspective of the students and report back to the instructor what that view looks like. In

this formative process the observer can also offer feedback on the design of the course, the validity of a

test, or the content of a syllabus, to cite a few examples.

Key Principle: In order for formative peer observation to be effective, it must respond to the concerns

and self-perceived needs of the instructor who requests it. It must also be carried out by someone who is

trusted and holds the respect of the observee.

How can a chair, dean or other administrator foster an environment in which instructors are

encouraged to seek improvements in their teaching?

It’s not easy. Attention to teaching has usually occurred in the context of evaluation rather than

improvement. Encouragement, facilitation (e.g., creating low-stakes opportunities), and subtle pressure

are most effective. Ultimately the decision to participate in a formative assessment process should lie

with the instructor her/himself. When an administrator demands an assessment, it can quickly cross the

line into summative assessment.

Administrators can help the process by creating the conditions for effective formative assessment

through their leadership in various ways:

by developing clear, well-articulated expectations for teaching effectiveness, so that an instructor

has reason to reflect on his/her own progress and skill level;

by sponsoring a process for the whole department to support teaching skill development;

by conspicuously participating—as an observee—in peer observation, him/herself, to set an

example;

by structuring opportunities for confidential peer feedback, such as through mentoring programs

or “buddy” systems; and

by designing collaboratively with faculty a teaching assessment plan, to allow faculty members

to agree on the “targets” and criteria by which their teaching will be evaluated.

Outside entities, such as ITLAL, a faculty member from another department, or a consultant from

elsewhere are potential resources that administrators can use in developing this kind of framework and

in providing a wide variety of tools for formative assessment. An outside organization can also help a

department develop a new standard for instructional assessment without the politically perilous act of

imposing one from the top.

Is peer observation potentially too political to be used for summative assessment?

If poorly planned and managed, it most certainly can be destructive. If there are no clear criteria or

clearly delineated, documented procedures, for example, peer observation can be disastrous. A single

unannounced visit to the classroom of a candidate for tenure, for the purpose of making a judgment

about his/her teaching, is not just misguided—it is a serious lapse in professional judgment on the part of

those involved.

Furthermore, if drop-in summative peer observations are conducted in the absence of a process for

formative assessment, then they can be seen—and rightly so—as punitive. Consider as an analogy a

biology course in which students have no access to formative feedback on their learning throughout the

semester, no chance to measure their learning against the hidden criteria, but then are given a final exam

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that will determine—once and for all— their acceptance into medical school. The summative peer

observation has to be implemented within a process that communicates expectations and provides

feedback before making a definitive judgment that can affect a person’s professional status.

This is particularly crucial in the case of less experienced instructors. If a department has no process or

procedure in place to help new instructors develop and refine their practices, a summative assessment is

highly suspect. It builds into the assessment process the flawed assumption that teaching is a static

process. Furthermore, a summative assessment without its formative complement easily becomes a

political tool that can be manipulated and abused to serve individual interests.

The good news is that summative peer observations can capture dimensions of teaching—such as

rapport with students, mood of the classroom, student excitement, creative use of visual support, and

creativity of teaching materials—that do not typically register through other evaluation processes. For an

instructor who has had opportunities for feedback by his peers in a supportive environment, a series of

classroom observations for tenure review purposes can be a critical, positive part of a comprehensive,

multi-faceted summative assessment of teaching.

Negative attitudes about summative assessment more often than not have to do with lack of a

comprehensive process and with how it is handled by a given administrator. This latter topic will be

treated in greater detail in Part V.

How can formative and summative assessments of teaching be coordinated?

The faculty members of a department or program should start by identifying the goals of learning and

the dimensions of teaching that it values most. This is not to suggest that all teaching should be the

same. However, the faculty in a given department should all agree on a set of outcomes that they seek

for their students, and consider the kinds of teaching practices that will support them. This discussion

could focus on the following three questions:

1. How should our students be changed as a result of our program?

2. What kinds of things should we do ourselves and encourage in each other to ensure that students

change in the way we intended?

3. What evidence will tell us if we have been effective in helping students change?

Formative assessment is part of a department’s continuing consideration of its teaching mission and

values. With the answers to these questions made explicit by the department, the faculty now has general

agreement on the types of teaching strategies and practices that will be valued and encouraged.

Resources and faculty development efforts can be directly tied to these expectations, and veteran faculty

members can serve as mentors to new faculty members to provide personalized, confidential feedback

on teaching. Mentors can consult with the new faculty on their course design and visit their classrooms

regularly to provide feedback. This “formative” process should be informal, supportive, sympathetic and

friendly, with frequent contact between the parties involved.

The summative assessment process is built on top of the formative process. The summative assessment is

not ongoing but occurs periodically in predetermined windows within a faculty member’s pre-tenure

probation and subsequent career. Biannually, for example, the department can collect data from several

key places to determine how the faculty member is developing as a teacher. The assessment questions in

this case would be the following:

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1. Is the faculty member teaching in ways (using strategies and methods) that are consistent with

the stated goals of the department?

2. Are the instructor’s students changing/developing in an acceptable way, at an acceptable rate?

(How are the students doing in subsequent courses?)

The first question could be answered by peer reviews of materials and classroom observations, using

instruments designed to reflect the department’s teaching mission. The second question could be

answered by tracking student performance and progress through the program, looking at student writing

samples or other products, as well as by looking at student survey data.

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IV. Formative Assessment of Teaching using Peer Observation

Formative assessment of teaching adheres to a few key principles:

1. It is frequent. The goal is to encourage development and track it over time.

2. It is confidential. The observee needs to feel free to invite candid, including negative, feedback.

3. It is analytical without being judgmental. The observee needs accurate, supportive input from

colleagues, not accusations about his/her professional practice.

4. It is non-threatening. The assessment should be invited by the observee and must carry no

negative consequences.

5. It is collaborative. The observee should be a partner in deciding which aspects of teaching will

be assessed, and who will do it.

Whether you develop a plan for yourself or it is sponsored by your department, there are several

questions that you will need to address before using peer observation for the formative assessment of

your own teaching.

What is your position/status in your department or program?

Your answer to this question will suggest the strategy you might pursue in developing a peer observation

plan. If you are a tenured faculty member you will probably be less constrained than if you are new and

untenured. Established, tenured faculty may be in a position that allows you to model best practices of

peer observation. You can become a leader by initiating formative peer observations for yourself and

any willing colleagues who will join you. Over time, you can then report to your colleagues the benefits

of peer observation, and even begin to suggest ways to establish a system that will help newer faculty

receive the feedback they need in a non-punitive, positive, supportive process.

If you are untenured and there is a clear process in place, such as a mentoring or buddy program, you are

very fortunate. However, you may want to examine the process and ask questions to make sure that the

distinctions between formative and summative assessment are clearly respected. Not all of your

colleagues will be equally sensitive to the need for confidentiality, so you will want to be sure of the

expectations of the person(s) assigned to you. You do not want to get caught in a situation where you

invite feedback, only to find that your colleague has discussed his/her observation of your teaching with

other members of the department, without your approval, or worse, put a letter in your file.

If you are untenured and in a department that has no process is in place to guide your formative

assessment, you will need to proceed carefully. Talk with your colleagues to learn the history and where

the political fault lines lie. Your goal is to build a network of people in your department who share the

value of informal feedback on teaching and who can be trusted to participate in an exchange of services,

completely separate from departmental evaluations. If you suspect that this conversation will be

controversial, a safer approach in these circumstances is to work with peers elsewhere in the university.

Check with ITLAL, which can help you find colleagues to work with.

Regardless of your position, here is one great concern to keep in mind: if effective teaching and the

evaluation of teaching have not traditionally been an explicit priority of the department, it is quite

possible that the formative/summative distinction will not be fully appreciated. In this case, when you

ask your chair or other colleagues for help in assessing your teaching for formative purposes, you might

end up in a de facto summative assessment.

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What type of teaching do you do?

Before beginning the peer observation process, it is important for instructors to spend some time

reflecting on their teaching values and practices. A first step is to clarify your answers to some

fundamental questions:

How do you want your students to change as a result of your teaching?

What teaching role(s) you have adopted in order to facilitate these changes in your students?

Which teaching tools (methods, techniques, technologies) have you chosen to support that role?

As a starting point for this reflection, consider this partial list of what university teachers do:

Maintenance and furtherance of disciplinary knowledge (via reading, research and publication)

Curriculum design

Course and syllabus design

Assignment design

Engagement/interaction with students

Presentation of material (lectures, for example)

Integration of technology (from low-tech blackboards and chalk to high-tech teaching on-line)

Assessment of student learning (testing, grading, tracking)

Direction of student independent study and research

Advising and mentoring of students

Scholarship of teaching (reading, presenting, writing about teaching in the discipline)

Supervision of graduate and undergraduate TA’s and RA’s

In any given teaching situation you will be involved in some combination of these activities, and your

emphasis will vary from course to course, year to year. Taking stock of what your dominant functions

are in any course is key to preparing for peer observation. In order to design a formative peer assessment

so it can be effective, develop a clear picture of who you are as a teacher, what your chosen practices

are, and why.

How do you define your role as a teacher?

For some instructors it helps to approach the question above from the point of view of the role you play

with/for your students. Which of the following concepts best captures the essence of what you do as a

teacher?

Coach

Director/Manager/Organizer

Activity or Event Designer

Case creator

Consultant

Content expert

Coordinator of activities

Discussion facilitator

Assessor/Evaluator of learning

Skeptical Questioner

Theatrical Performer

Role model

Negotiator

Advisor

Listener

Circus ring leader

Parent

Colleague or Peer

Why do you teach the way you teach?

Once you have articulated who you are as a teacher, it is equally important to connect your role to the

strategies and techniques you have chosen. When communicated to your observer, this connection

creates the context for understanding your choices as a teacher, which is necessary if the feedback you

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receive is to be relevant. If, for example, you intend for a class meeting to encourage lateral thinking by

students, the observation by a peer that you did not adequately control the focus of the class or present

enough information may not help you become more effective. What you need is for the observer to

recommend to you ways to provoke or encourage the lateral thinking you wanted to happen.

The following chart is a resource to help connect the goals and methods of your teaching to categories of

observable activities that might be identified for your peers in advance of an observation.

Matching Teaching Method with Observable Teaching Behavior

Teaching Method Used Instructor’s activity to be observed

Problem-solving; Problem-Based Learning Design of Problem

Organization of materials

Structure of the learning activity

Management of classroom process

Information Transfer (Lectures) Selection of material

Organization of material

Clarity of presentation

Enthusiasm, encouragement of student interest

Translation from abstract to concrete

Engagement with audience

Use of different media for support

Discussion Facilitation of directed conversation

Setting of mood and tone

Questioning strategies

Questioning sequence

Discussion initiation strategies

Engagement of all students

Anchoring, assessing, and clarifying student

learning gains

One-on-One Mentoring

Guiding without dictating

Personal Communication behavior

Questioning strategies

Affective considerations

Teaching Online Design of assignments and activities for

accessibility, usability of online materials

Conceptualization of learning environment

Constructive online communications

Management of online discussion

This list is only partial. An excellent resource to guide a self-analysis of your teaching is Anthony

Grasha’s Teaching with Style (Pittsburgh, PA: Alliance, 1996), a handbook for university teachers that

shows the connection between teaching beliefs, teaching philosophy, methods, and practices. A copy

can be found in ITLAL’s library.

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How do you prepare yourself—and your colleagues—for a peer observation of your teaching for

formative purposes?

After you have spent some time considering the questions above, you are ready to begin the peer

observation process. An effective process of peer observation includes the following components.

1. Sharing of relevant course materials with the observer, at least 2-3 days before the observation:

syllabus; lesson plan; planned future quiz or exam on relevant material, handouts, slides, etc.

2. Face-to-face pre-observation meeting at least one day before the observation, between observer

and observee. A meeting just before the class is less effective than an advance meeting.

3. The observation, with note-taking by observer. These “field notes” should loosely resemble those

of an ethnographer observing a distinct culture. The purpose of the notes is not to simply identify

problems but to record accurately what happens in class, whether positive or negative. The

observer should also write down analytical questions (“Why did you do that?” for example) that

occur to him/her at particular moments in class, for discussion with the instructor afterward.

4. Reflection by both parties. Both observer and observee need to schedule time to reflect—

separately—after the observation. The observer needs to analyze his/her notes and identify the

primary themes for discussion. The observee needs to self-assess and plan questions for the

observer that could be used to help analyze the experience.

5. A face-to-face post-observation meeting a day or two after the class observation. The point of this

meeting is to share perspectives and to reach greater insight as to why things occurred the way

they did. The observee should state what he/she experienced in the classroom from the

instructor’s perspective; the observer should offer corroborations where appropriate or additional

observations and analysis that help the observee more assess the experience from a different

perspective.

6. Written summary (optional). Depending on how the observee wishes to use the assessment, a

write-up is a possible final step in the process. An instructor might want to document a peer

observation as part of a teaching portfolio. However, whether or not to use a formative peer

observation in a summative assessment has to be the free decision of the observee.

How should a pre-observation meeting be structured?

In the pre-observation meeting the instructor needs to be able to explain the purpose of the class, what

will be happening, and why. The observer needs to understand the instructor’s expectations for what will

happen in class. The instructor also needs to tell the observer the kinds of things to focus on: classroom

management, discussion prompts, student response, etc.

To ensure useful observations by a peer, you will need to be able to communicate to your observer the

answers to the following questions, so your peer’s observations will be relevant to the context of your

own (and not his/her) teaching.

1. What are your objectives for the students in the class being observed? (What changes do you

want students to undergo? What skills, knowledge, and perspectives will they be developing?)

2. What will be your role (your own function) in the process?

3. What have you chosen to do (and how does this choice connect to your objective and role)?

4. What are your expectations for what students will actually do, and for what will actually happen

in the classroom?

5. How will you know if you have been successful?

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How should a post-observation meeting be structured?

In the post-observation meeting the observer needs to give the observee the opportunity to explain what

he/she believes was happening in the class and make an assessment of where there was evidence of

success or struggle. Then the observer should report back to the instructor what he/she saw happening in

the class, focusing specifically (though not necessarily exclusively) on the areas that he/she agreed to

focus on. Some questions that might be used to drive this conversation include the following:

1. Was this a typical class? Did the class go as you had expected?

2. Were there any surprises?

3. What did you think went particularly well?

4. What didn’t go the way you had hoped?

What should you do if you are invited to observe a colleague’s teaching for formative purposes?

Before you conduct an observation of a colleague’s teaching, it is important for you to spend some time

reflecting on your own teaching beliefs and practices. It is important, for example, to consider where

your own thinking about teaching might color what you see or interfere with your ability to observe a

classroom with total objectivity.

The pre-observation meeting is intended in part to gain clarity on the differences in how observer and

observee conceptualize teaching. There are several steps to the observation process, and the more

thorough you are in your preparation, the more likely you are to provide your colleague with meaningful

feedback. Here are some important strategies to ensure a productive observation.

Well in advance of the observation, request relevant course materials from the observee. Review

them before the pre-observation meeting. These materials are most likely to be the course

syllabus, a lesson plan for the targeted class meeting, copies of exercises and assignments to be

used in this particular class meeting, possibly some sample quiz or exam questions that will be

used to test students on this part of the course.

Insist on meeting face-to-face with the colleague before the event to be observed. (A phone call

or e-mail exchange are better than nothing, but not ideal.) This meeting may focus on the

following:

o Discuss and make sure you understand your colleague’s values and self-image as a

teacher.

o Ask for an explanation of what your colleague will be doing, and why.

o Ask your colleague to predict what should happen in class.

o Ask your colleague to explain what his/her measurement of success will be for what

happens in the observed class meeting. (How will you both know if he/she has been

successful?)

o Ask your colleague to indicate special issues or concerns that he/she wants you to pay

attention to during the observation.

Insist on meeting with the observee after the visit.

How effective is video recording a class meeting for formative evaluation purposes?

The advantage of video recording is that an instructor can view the class as many times as desired before

showing it to a colleague. This allows for greater safety and comfort, if these are needed. It also has the

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advantage of greatly objectifying what happens in the classroom. Viewing the recording shows not only

what the instructor does, but, depending on how well it is recorded, also how students are responding. It

is difficult to overlook what is going on in the classroom when it is playing in color before you.

Another advantage is that the video recording can be discussed with several different colleagues to elicit

differing perspectives on the same class meeting.

Finally, a video recording is an excellent record of certain teaching techniques that are difficult to

capture on paper. For some teachers, a video clip can be an effective component of a teaching portfolio,

so it will have a purpose in summative as well as formative assessment.

What are some of the practical issues of video recording?

The faculty member and the video camera operator will need to meet in advance of the session to be

recorded in order to reach an understanding of what will happen. Will the operator remain in the room

during the shooting? Will the camera be stationary or will it move to follow movements in the

classroom? Will the operator focus only on the instructor, or will he/she be asked to track individual

students or groups as well? How will sound be captured, and will sound need to be captured from

anyone other than the instructor?

What are the downsides of video recording?

The problem with a video recording is its potential to needlessly diminish an instructor’s confidence by

hyper-objectifying (and seemingly exaggerating) small flaws in a teaching performance, which, while

often insignificant in terms of student learning, can be deflating to a new instructor watching him/herself

for the first time. We recommend working with a member of the ITLAL staff to review the recording in

a productive way.

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V. Developing a Departmental Plan for Formative Use of Peer Observation

Depending on the current politics of your department, you will have to choose between a comprehensive

plan and an ad hoc approach. If your department’s leadership has the trust and respect of most of its

faculty, and if the normal fault lines in any academic unit have not evolved into major schisms, you have

the luxury of working with your chair and other opinion leaders in your department to develop a

systematic approach right from the start.

Here is a word of caution: Setting up a department-wide formative process for peer observation, where

none has existed in the past, will require a broad, structured conversation with most department

members. You may want to invite a facilitator from outside the department to lead the discussion.

Without this conversation, it will be difficult to account for and address the incredible range of issues—

many of them emotionally charged—that will be on the minds of your colleagues. Historically,

university teaching assessment practices nationwide have been deplorable, and nearly everyone will be

able to recall a personal experience that illustrates the potential risk and pain of trusting colleagues to

participate in the assessment of teaching, even for well-meaning development purposes.

For some of your colleagues, the notion of formative assessment as distinct from summative assessment

will not be seen as essential. This can be a stumbling block. The broad conversation among faculty will

therefore need to reach clarity on these two concepts, and ensure that they inform whatever system the

department decides to use. In addition, the following principles of formative assessment, iterated in the

previous chapter, are useful to keep in mind.

1. It is frequent. The goal is to encourage development and track it over time.

2. It is confidential. The observee needs to feel free to invite candid, including negative, feedback.

3. It is analytical without being judgmental. The observee needs honest, supportive, accurate input

from colleagues, not accusations about his/her professional practice.

4. It is non-threatening. The assessment should be invited by the observee, and must carry no

negative consequences.

5. It is collaborative. The observee should be a partner in deciding which aspects of teaching will

be assessed, and who will do it.

What are some workable, time-tested models for department-sponsored formative assessment of

teaching? We recommend any of these three. The one your department uses will depend on several factors, which

are addressed below.

A. The Buddy System

B. The Team System

C. The Mentor System

A. The buddy system

What is the buddy system?

The assumption behind the buddy system is that the most reliable, most trustworthy observer of your

teaching is someone whose professional trajectory, professional status, and teaching interests are most

like yours. This is in contrast to the mentor system (described below), in which you work with an

observer who has more experience, seniority, and expertise than you do.

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What are the advantages of the buddy system?

The buddy system emphasizes the friendly, non-threatening aspects of peer observation. For a new pre-

tenure faculty member or a lecturer, for example, a peer with the same professional status has no

authority with regard to your employment. Free of the hierarchy, you are more likely to have candid

communications with this person and share certain perspectives and attitudes. Add to this the probability

that you will be closer to this person on the learning curve as a teacher and will therefore be dealing with

many of the same issues. If you are sympathetic to each other’s concerns, you will be more likely to find

in this person a colleague with whom to collaborate and share openly and unselfconsciously all ideas

related to teaching.

What are the potential pitfalls of the buddy system?

Not all buddies are equal, and therefore you risk getting poor advice if you have not chosen your buddy

wisely. Beware of the “I’ll stroke your ego if you’ll stroke mine” trap. Also, if you have only one buddy,

you risk getting feedback that might not provide a complete picture. Particularly important is not to

align yourself with someone who has not adapted well to the department. Rather, seek a buddy who

seems well-adjusted and is respected by colleagues.

A complete newbie may also have limited experience with—and thus a limited perspective on—

teaching. It is important to make sure that your buddies and you are both fully informed about the

expectations for teaching in your department. You will need to have conversations about teaching with

other departmental colleagues to get a feel for the mission, if it is not already explicit.

Another risk of the buddy system relates to the size of your department. In small departments where the

hiring of new faculty occurs only occasionally, it may be impossible for newer faculty members to find

buddies in the same or related discipline. If the buddy system is what the department decides to promote,

it may be necessary to seek buddy candidates in another department or even in another college.

A final difficulty is that the buddy system may not work if imposed artificially from above. It works best

when two colleagues discover common interests and pursue them together. Engineering such a

discovery is a tough act, even for the best administrators.

What do buddies do to help each other?

In the buddy system, two colleagues exchange services. These can include but are not restricted to the

following:

Reviewing, critiquing syllabus and course design

Brainstorming lesson plans, assignments and classroom activities

Reviewing, critiquing tests and quizzes

Exchanging classroom visits several times per semester

Sharing materials, if you are teaching similar courses

Sharing teaching techniques that have been successful

Watching a video recording of a class with you

Working together to interpret the results of student surveys

How does a department set up a buddy system?

If the department wants to use this system it will have to make explicit the expectation that incoming

faculty members seek out colleagues on their own, either inside or outside the department, and are held

responsible for a minimum number of classroom visits. For those faculty members who have been at the

university for a while, it should be relatively easy for them to find a trusted colleague with whom to

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work. For newer faculty, it will be necessary to make a conscious, concerted effort to socialize with

other newer faculty from across the university. Check with ITLAL, which is one of the places on

campus where cross-disciplinary socialization is likely to occur. This office will also have an active

accounting of which departments have new faculty, and which new faculty members are likely to be

looking for buddies.

What about accountability? If faculty members choose not to do it, how will the system work?

If the department truly wants to be systematic about adopting this strategy, it will need to institute some

means of assessing whether faculty are actually doing it. This can be done through each faculty

member’s documentation of his/her collaboration as a part of an annual teaching self-evaluation or as

part of a teaching portfolio. The documentation would not include the content (such as results or peer

reports) of the peer observations, but just a record that the collaboration occurred, and perhaps an

indication of any new instructional ideas that grew from that collaboration.

B. The Team System

What is the team system?

The assumption behind the team system is that there is safety in numbers. This is the faculty equivalent

of a support group.

The team system is similar in many ways to the buddy system in the sense that it is an exchange of

services (see that list, above), but it has more flexibility in terms of who can comprise a team. Some of

the same values prevail, but here there is less emphasis on homogeneity and more room for diversity.

Also, there is less concern about power relations and more concern for multiplicity of perspectives.

While the Buddy System is designed to work around departmental power alignments by avoiding them

altogether, the Team System offsets issues of power, authority and hierarchy through multiple

participants and multiple perspectives.

What are the challenges of using the team system?

These are the same as they would be for the buddy system. It is hard to assign a team that works.

Accountability is not easy.

What are the advantages of the team system?

The great advantage is multiple perspectives on your teaching. You will be amazed at how two or three

of your peers can reach very different conclusions about your teaching, based on their own assumptions.

Another advantage is convenience. With more peers available to you, you are more likely to find

someone who is free to visit your classroom. You do not need to exchange visits one-on-one. If you

observe colleague A, he/she can observe colleague B, who might observe you.

C. The Mentor System

How does the mentor system compare to the buddy and team systems?

The mentor system is the easiest of the systems for departments to implement formally because the

model works within the power-and-influence relations that are common between veteran and new

faculty members. The assumptions are that someone who has “been there and done that” will be an

effective guide to a newbie (an apprentice), and that a newbie, out of respect will work with whoever is

assigned to him/her. Given this traditional format, a department chair or a dean can reasonably assign a

mentor to a new faculty member and expect the new faculty member to feel committed to work with the

mentor. The challenge for the administrator is to choose carefully an appropriate mentor for new faculty

member. This decision will be based on a range of criteria, including personality, ambition, interests,

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level of confidence, expertise; administrators might also include considerations such as gender,

ethnicity, and nationality.

Do the mentor and mentee exchange services, just like in the buddy and team system?

Yes, that’s the point. One good way to mentor someone is to ask them to do for you what you hope they

will ask you to do for them. Establishing an exchange of services reduces the potential for friction

implied in the power relation. In some mentoring systems, unfortunately, the mentor carries out the

feedback services for the mentee, as on a one-way street. Or worse, the mentor invites the mentee to

visit a class in order to “show them how it’s done.” Therein lies one of the problems of this system; it

can reinforce systemically the lower status of the mentee.

What are the potential pitfalls of the mentor system?

Mentor systems go wrong when the assumptions of hierarchy upon which they are based are not true for

all of those who participate, whether mentor or mentee. While many new faculty may appreciate the

attention of a dedicated mentor, others perceive the relationship as an unwanted intrusion and even a

threat. These situations can present a real barrier to a successful formative assessment process, as

mentees may fear that any observation is by nature summative and necessarily will be part of a tenure

decision. In some cases there are simply clashes of personality, especially since the mentor is typically

imposed, not chosen. In other cases, poorly handled power relations can complicate other embedded

issues, such as those of gender and ethnicity.

Mentor systems have a higher rate of success when they are managed outside of the departmental power

structure, and when the mentor comes from a different department or college. This removes the

mentee’s potential fear of being observed by the same person who might be in a position of judgment at

a later date.

A handbook with best practices for mentoring is available at the Provost’s Office website:

https://www.albany.edu/academics/mentoring.best.practices.toc.shtml.

Given the potential problems, why should departments consider developing a peer observation

system for formative assessment?

The goal is to get the faculty to take ownership of a department’s overall teaching quality, so it’s worth

the risk to put into place the means to share the responsibility. Even with the potential pitfalls,

departments that talk about teaching tend to do a better job of it.

Which formative peer observation system is right for your department?

Since each department has its own strengths and issues, there are no rules. If your department is small

and has a history of congeniality and talking openly about teaching, an informal mentoring system can

be effective, in that it might function much like a buddy or team system. On the other hand, the

mentoring system is more likely to work well in a large department, where it is possible to assign to a

new faculty member someone who can keep some distance from the candidate’s tenure judgment.

Departments with severe political divisions or problems of incivility should avoid the department-based

mentoring system and look for mentoring opportunities led by external organizations such as ITLAL.

Another option in such cases is to encourage new faculty to find buddies or work with teams in other

departments, and provide documentation in their teaching portfolios.

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VI. Developing a Departmental Plan for Summative Use of Peer Observation

Summative assessment of teaching effectiveness requires a more methodical and procedural approach

than does a system for formative assessment. The two should be developed together and should be

coordinated, but a summative assessment needs to be formalized and procedurally strict so as not to

compromise its integrity at any point during the process. Keep in mind, too, that careers are at stake, so

the system must be designed to accomplish its goals fairly and steadily even in the face of controversy.

How can you avoid some key problems in using peer observations for summative purposes?

A careful administrator can minimize the problems inherent in evaluation of teaching by creating the

conditions for effective summative assessment through his/her leadership. Some key best practices for

ensuring these conditions include the following:

making the departmental learning outcomes and teaching mission public,

publicly participating in and offering to model being evaluated,

making the teaching mission and evaluation forms available prior to classroom visits,

arranging meetings with faculty prior to and after an evaluation,

clearly articulating accepted standards for performance, tied to the values and mission,

achieving departmental consensus on the objectives of classes that will be evaluated, and

meeting with faculty after an assessment to answer questions.

How can a fair system be developed?

The single most important factor is the careful preparation (via orientation and training) of the faculty

evaluators. This may seem counter-intuitive, since the faculty can cite their great amounts of teaching

experience as sufficient training, but it is difficult to over-estimate the risk of launching a program

without making sure everyone practices certain procedures and understands why they are essential.

Assessment specialists can be invited into the department to do group sessions for the entire faculty, or

those who will conduct peer observations can be asked to attend workshops addressing this set of skills.

Practice evaluations, role plays, and norming sessions through case studies are particularly useful in

preparing faculty to observe their colleagues in the classroom.

There are several other important steps in developing a plan for summative assessment of teaching.

Consider your department’s mission and teaching values. If you are going to build a sound

teaching evaluation plan, the values that guide the system should be explicit and directly

connected to things that are most important to your faculty. Otherwise, the criteria for evaluation

will constantly shift depending on pet concerns and different personalities, thus invalidating the

process and creating political problems.

If you have not already done so, you will need to identify specific learning outcomes for your

graduating students. This means that you will need to record clearly, through faculty consensus,

what you want students to become during their time under the influence of your academic

program. Your outcomes will indicate what you value most as teachers, and therefore which

approaches to teaching are most likely to generate the results you target in your students.

Consider the political climate of your department and college. The personalities of the key

administrators as well as the unofficial opinion leaders will surely have an effect on both the

function of the process as well as the perceived validity of the results. Depending on the make-up

of your department, it may not be enough to simply start with the enthusiasts and hope to pull

along the rest. Even the most recalcitrant should be invited into the discussion at some point

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early in the process. It is often a good idea to invite in a facilitator from outside the department to

structure a discussion on the process of developing a summative evaluation plan.

Consider how the evaluation process will be administered. Will there be a committee that takes

responsibility for the process? Or will the whole department share in that responsibility? Even if

you go with a committee structure, the whole department will need to be included in the

conversation. Either way, the faculty who perform observations for summative purposes need to

undergo preparation. This preparation should include developing an appreciation for how the

department’s teaching and learning values can be supported through a wide range of teaching

strategies and styles. Another element of the preparation should be “norming,” in which a group

of would-be observers watch a video recorded teaching moment or review a document and then

compare and discuss their respective evaluations.

Consider the type of instrument to be used. In the next chapter there is a summary of this topic

with suggestions that could be adapted to nearly any peer observation plan. Some use a “yes-no”

scheme, in which the teaching values of the department have been represented as a set of

teaching behaviors that are either present or not in a given instructor’s practice. Others allow for

scoring on a Likert scale. Others are more flexible still, inviting observers to look for classroom

phenomena that represent preferred teaching values. Any of these can be effective as long as the

goals, criteria and standards are clear. It will be necessary for your departmental faculty to decide

how narrowly it wants to define effective teaching practices and how much interpretation to

leave to the observer.

Consider how evaluations will be recorded and communicated both to the person being

evaluated and to the administrators who need to know. Summative evaluations can be sensitive

and therefore should be handled with care and confidentiality. The process of gathering the

results of the evaluation process, compiling them, and reporting them to the chair should be

made explicit. The chair or chief administrator then communicates the conclusions to the

evaluated faculty member as part of a larger evaluation process. Contrast the formal handling of

summative assessment with the more personal handling of formative assessments.

Can the models used for formative assessment also work in summative assessment?

The two processes should work in tandem, so that the focal points of formative assessment are

consistent with the focal points of summative assessment. The feedback a faculty member receives from

colleagues during formative assessment should square with the criteria being used in summative

assessment for the same department. The person being evaluated needs to see that the criteria and

standards do not shift, so that the work he/she does as a result of formative feedback can be measured in

the summative assessment process. For example, if a department puts great effort into encouraging its

faculty members to adopt collaborative learning models because this model encourages student

development consistent with the mission of the department, then the formal evaluation of teaching

should be sure to address that primary value. It makes no sense to foster collaborative learning only to

follow up with drop-in peer observations that measure only the quality of lectures.

Should the peer observers who participate in a faculty member’s formative assessment also be

involved in his/her summative assessment?

This overlap is not ideal, but sometimes it works just fine. Practically, depending on the size of your

department, it may be unavoidable. At a minimum, every member of the department should be aware of

the teaching and learning goals and practices expressed in the departmental mission, and receive training

in evaluation that addresses those goals and practices. It is possible for the same peer to conduct both

formative and summative assessment as long as the process that generates formative recommendations

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is separated from the summative assessment. The level of detail sought in a formative assessment is

typically too great for a summative assessment. Specific flaws uncovered in a formative assessment may

not be relevant in a summative assessment. The faculty member needs to be confident that the formative

assessment is not a definitive judgment.

Why can’t the two processes take place simultaneously, using the same structures and formats?

The two processes have conflicting goals and therefore, at some point, diverge completely. The role of a

faculty observer for the purpose of formative assessment is different from the role of a faculty observer

for the purpose of summative evaluation. While the former is more closely and consciously aligned with

the specific needs of the particular colleague being observed, the latter is more closely and consciously

aligned with the teaching values of the department. In the best of all worlds, these two perspectives are

very closely aligned, but administratively discrete. In politically healthy departments the distinction is

less pronounced because the high level of faculty-to-faculty trust allows for the processes to overlap. But

that’s not the best case upon which to develop procedures to manage a high-stakes decision process. The

careful separation of formative and summative processes helps ensure that summative assessment

process can function even in a politically challenging environment of political dysfunction and distrust.

If we’ve never done peer assessment of teaching before, how do we start?

1. Have a structured departmental discussion of the teaching mission, based on student learning

outcomes for your curriculum.

2. Identify the criteria and standards for effective teaching in your program or department. These

should reflect what is stated in your mission and student learning outcomes.

3. Verify that a formative peer observation plan is in place (see Chapter IV), to ensure that the

faculty have an opportunity to develop their teaching toward the mission. If there is not such a

plan in place, stop consideration of a summative peer assessment process until a formative

process exists.

4. Select or design mission-specific instruments and procedures to guide the evaluation process.

5. Prepare and train the faculty on how to conduct peer observations.

6. Decide on a procedure for collecting and communicating the results of the evaluations.

What difficulties will a department need to address in setting up a peer observation program for

summative assessment?

1. Consensus on what constitutes “good teaching” will be difficult. The Eight Principles described

in the Prologue can help foster an effective conversation about your department’s teaching

values.

2. Even well-meaning peers may not be consistent in their evaluations of colleagues.

3. Faculty reputations can bias an observation.

4. Peer observation should be only one part of a larger evaluation of teaching.

5. It is difficult to get faculty to undergo training on observing teaching.

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VII. Choosing or Designing an Instrument to Guide Peer Observation

The purpose of a peer observation will determine the type of instrument that will be appropriate in

conducting it. Instruments range from the highly restrictive to the open-ended, and any of them might be

effective, depending on the given circumstances.

Types of Instruments

Three commonly-used instruments are checklists, Likert scale ratings, and ethnography-style

observation.

A. Checklists

Checklists are the most prescriptive and restrictive. The list allows observers to indicate whether they

observed a particular teaching behavior. Here are some sample items in an instrument of this sort.

1. Does the instructor use active learning techniques?

2. Do students have chances to apply concepts during class?

The assumption behind this type of instrument is that sound teaching behaviors lead to effective

teaching. Using visual support, asking good questions, waiting for answers, calling on students by

name: all of these have been shown through educational research to enhance student learning. An

instructor who does these things, the logic goes, is doing a good job.

Of course, all of us have taken courses from highly effective teachers who had few (perhaps none) of the

textbook behaviors associated with good teaching. And many of us have taken courses from highly

ineffective teachers who serve as textbook examples of “good teaching behaviors.” Sometimes, the way

a teacher connects (or does not) with students cannot be fully explained by a set of teaching behaviors.

Hence, the limitation of the checklist.

This does not mean we should simply reject the checklist as an instrument. In fact, the checklist can be

very effective when used with other instruments, such as a written analysis (see below). While it may

not tell the whole story, a checklist can be a good way to identify potential reasons for why a given

instructor is effective or not. It is particularly good for a first-time observation or for troubleshooting a

problematic situation. The data collected can point the observer to places to look for a more in-depth

analysis. A wide representation of effective behaviors might help explain why a given instructor is

successful; a dearth of those behaviors might help explain why an instructor is struggling. A sample

checklist instrument can be found in Appendix C.

B. Likert scale ratings

These are by far the most common instruments used for peer observation, just as they are used for

student evaluation of teaching. We do not recommend the use of a Likert scale instrument for formative

purposes. These instruments can have a judgmental tone that may not be effective for giving feedback

about teaching. If a Likert-style instrument is used, it needs to be accompanied by written analysis to

ensure that the feedback received is informative rather than merely judgmental. A sample Likert scale

instrument can be found in Appendix C.

C. Ethnography-style observation

In some cases, the function of the observation is to collect data from the classroom as a way of providing

the communication basis between instructor and observer. An observer engaging in this process tries

simply to capture as many salient details of the event as possible, as objectively as possible. This means

transcribing or at least verbally sketching what happens during the class meeting. The resulting

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document, which looks a bit like an ethnography, can be a powerful way of providing formative

feedback to an instructor. The observer brings the document to the post-observation meeting and goes

through it with the instructor. This allows for a conversation about specific choices the instructor made,

and alternatives, if appropriate. A sample instrument of this type can be found in Appendix E.

Is the written analysis a superior instrument?

The written analysis requires more work on the part of the observer, but whether it is used as a stand-

alone document or in accompaniment to other instruments, it is an essential piece of any peer

observation. The analytical process conducted either through a checklist or a ratings instrument needs to

be incorporated into a more holistic view, since sometimes the whole can be greater or less than the sum

of its parts. The written analysis also allows the observer to address the instructor’s goals for that

particular session, which is a level of tailoring that the other instruments do not allow.

However, the written analysis is not merely an open-ended document, expressing an observer’s opinion.

It should be guided by the agreed-upon criteria (either the individual’s or the department’s), so as to

structure a peer’s observation and report.

Are any of these more appropriate for one type of assessment (formative) over the other

(summative)?

Any of these instruments, with variations, can serve either type of process. Perhaps the most important

thing to keep in mind is that for summative evaluation, in which careers are at stake, a combination of

approaches is more likely to generate a valid and reliable evaluation.

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Appendix A: The Peer Observation Process For Instructor Being Observed

1. Inform your students that there will be a visitor observing the class before the day of the

observation. You want the day of an observation to be as “normal” as possible, so you want your

students to be prepared for the presence of the observer and not feel uncomfortable.

2. Meet with the observer at least a day before the scheduled class meeting. The purpose of this

meeting is for you to let your observer know as much as possible about your intentions for this class

meeting and to identify your objectives. The discussion should create a context for the class to be

observed and give you the opportunity to share any special information that your observer may need

to understand what will be happening in class on the day of the observation. If the observer has not

already seen it, bring a copy of your course syllabus and any other relevant materials to discuss

during this meeting. Here are some questions you might want to be prepared to answer during this

meeting:

How does this class fit into the course syllabus?

What are the specific goals of this class meeting?

How does this class meet one or more of the course objectives?

What happened in the previous class meeting?

What have the students done to prepare for this class?

What will you do in class? What methods and strategies will you use?

What would you like for me to focus on when I observe?

How would you like to receive feedback from me? Make sure you take time to discuss and agree

upon the observation instrument and type of feedback you would like the observer to provide.

3. Reflect on the class meeting. Before you meet with your observer, take some time to think about

your sense of how the class went. Ask yourself some questions:

What went well?

Where did your students seem to respond positively to what you were doing?

Where do you see evidence that you met your objectives for the class meeting?

What do you wish had worked better?

4. Meet with the observer. After you have been observed, make sure to take time to meet with the

observer to discuss both of your perceptions of the class. Considering the reflective questions above

will help you prepare for this meeting. Feel free to ask your observer questions about his/her

perceptions of how students were responding to particular activities.

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Appendix B: The Peer Observation Process For Instructor Conducting Observation

1. Meet with the instructor of the class to be observed at least a day before the scheduled class

meeting. The purpose of this meeting is for you to learn as much as possible about the instructor’s

intentions and to identify his/her objectives. The discussion should create a context for the class to

be observed. You should take time to look at the instructor’s course syllabus and any other relevant

materials before and/or during this meeting. You might want to ask the following questions about the

class meeting you will be observing:

How does this class fit into the course syllabus?

What are the specific goals of this class meeting?

How does this class meet one or more of the course objectives?

What happened in the previous class meeting?

What have the students done to prepare for this class?

What will you do in class? What methods and strategies will you use?

What would you like for me to focus on when I observe?

How would you like to receive feedback from me? Make sure you take time to discuss and agree

upon the observation instrument and type of feedback you will provide the instructor.

2. Visit the class. Arrive early and take a seat in an inconspicuous part of the room. Bring a watch and a

note pad as well as any observation instrument/form you will be completing during the observation.

The most important thing to remember about the class visit is that your primary goal is to observe

and record as accurately as possible the events that transpire. Consider it your job to write an

“ethnography” rather than an evaluation. Take the point of view of a student in the class, and try to

make observations that reflect the learning, rather than the teaching, process.

No matter what kind of observation instrument you are using, focus on recording what the students

see, hear, say, and do. Also record what the instructor does, but do so from the student’s perspective.

3. Reflect on your experience as an observer. Reread your notes and identify several items that you can

discuss with the observed instructor. You should include things that went well and that you will want

to reinforce in your post-observation meeting. You should also identify places where you could

make constructive suggestions for changes in how the class was managed.

If you are using any kind of checklist or observation form, it might also be useful for yourself and

the instructor being observed to construct a summary narrative of your comments.

4. Meet with the observed instructor. Start by asking the instructor how he/she felt about the class. Was

it a typical class? Were the objectives reached? What went well? What would he/she have liked to

improve?

Keep in mind that an important goal of the observation is to give the instructor a snapshot of his/her

class—free of judgment. Offer to read sections of your notes where interesting, particularly good, or

problematic things occurred. Your ability to recapture the class in detail helps your credibility as an

observer. The transcript will also give you something concrete to use if you wish to demonstrate an

important point about a moment of the class.

Make sure that you indicate to the observed instructor the things that worked. Then limit your

suggestions or recommendations for change to just a few. Too many suggestions may leave the

instructor less confident as a teacher and uncertain about what to change.

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Appendix C: Peer Observation Checklist

Instructor _________________________ Course ___________________________

Observer _________________________ Date ___________________________

Teaching behavior Behavior observed? (Y/N) Comments

Instructor clearly

communicates the purpose

of class session and

instructional activities.

Instructor uses concrete

examples and illustrations

that clarify the material.

Instructor uses a variety of

activities to ensure all

students are engaged.

Instructor challenges

students to think

analytically.

Instructor uses activities

in class to determine

whether students

understand course

material.

Instructor fosters student-

to-student interaction.

Instructor links new

material to previously

learned concepts.

Instructor uses visuals and

handouts where

appropriate to accompany

verbal presentation.

Instructor requires

students to be active (e.g.,

completing a task,

applying concepts, or

engaging in discussion

instead of passively

listening).

Students are comfortable

asking questions.

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Students actively

participate in class

activities and discussions.

Students are able to

connect course material to

other relevant topics.

Additional Comments/Observations

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Appendix D: Likert Scale Rating Peer Observation Form

Instructor _________________________ Course ___________________________

Observer _________________________ Date ___________________________

SA = Strongly Agree A = Agree D = Disagree SD = Strongly Disagree NA = Not Applicable

1. Students are exposed to major concepts/principles in the field.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

2. Instructor clearly communicates the purpose of class session

and instructional activities.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

3. Instructor uses examples and illustrations that help clarify the

topic being discussed.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

4. Instructor inspires student interest in the subject matter.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

5. Instructor notes and responds to signs of student puzzlement.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

6. Instructor notes and responds to signs of student boredom.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

7. Instructor provides opportunities for students to bring up

relevant issues.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

8. Instructor manages classroom discussions effectively.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

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9. Instructor facilitates discussions among students, not just

between instructor and students.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

10. Instructor uses a variety of teaching activities.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

11. Instructor presents activities and materials appropriate for

students’ level of experience and ability.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

12. Instructor demonstrates that the course material is important

and has real-world relevance.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

13. Instructor challenges students to think analytically.

Comments:

SA A D SD NA

Summary Comments:

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Appendix E: Ethnography-Style Peer Observation

Instructor _________________________ Course ___________________________

Observer _________________________ Date ___________________________

Time What teacher is doing What students are doing

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Balance of Use of Time (Teacher/Student Activity)

Highlights of effective moments

Additional Comments/Suggestions